I took two weeks off of work, and I expected to do a lot of reading. But it turns out my brain was busy recovering from an intense 2021 and I mostly didn’t have the attention span.
Books
Love Con
Seressia Glass
Contemporary Romance, m/f
A Black cosplayer is one costume set away from winning a reality show, and she impulsively tells the world — on national television — that she’s dating her best friend. They have to keep up the ruse in front of cameras and sabotaging producers while navigating the very real feelings they both have for one another. This book was so deeply satisfying!
Girls Before Earls
Anna Bennett
Historical Romance, m/f
The premise of this book — an earl who is suddenly the guardian for his grieving, troublemaking niece gets tangled up with the headmistress of a fledgling school for young ladies — is basically my catnip. Learning, grief, 19th century science. Unfortunately, while I quite liked both characters, I didn’t quite believe they would do the things they did.
The Past Is Red
Catherynne Valente
Science Fiction
In a future where climate change has drowned the world as we know it, a small society of survivors live on the Great Garbage Patch in the Pacific Ocean. This book is a deep meditation on the ways humans find strength and beauty where they are while also maintaining all of the lines and stratifications that make people feel like they have a place. Funny, disturbing, complex.
TV
The Gilded Age
HBO
We love a good, frothy, costume drama, and this show from the creator of Downton Abbey doesn’t disappoint. Marion arrives at her aunt’s house in NYC from Pennsylvania and is immediately thrust into the polite but vicious war between the “old New York” of her aunts and the rich parvenus who live across the street.
Queer Eye
Netflix
I love the Fab Five, although we did skip the Japan series. (Too many opportunities for well-meaning but clueless cultural nonsense there.) This season was in Austin and had all of the heartwarming relationship repair and lives put back on track I expect from them. It was, on the whole, a lovely way to ring in the new year. Also, I’m loving that they all appear to be a lot more comfortable with one another in a way that is familiar to me in queer community — lots of touching, lots of teasing. It’s lovely to see.
Rereads
The Game
Laurie R. King
Historical Mystery
Russell and Holmes are dispatched to colonial India to help find a missing British spy. Not my favorite of the Russell/Holmes novels (it gets … a little brutal), but I appreciate the fun of intertwining this fictional world with Kipling’s.
Locked Rooms
Laurie R. King
Historical Mystery
Russell and Holmes visit San Francisco, where Russell unearths buried memories of her past in the 1906 earthquake and makes a discovery that changes her experience of family. This is one of my favorite Russell/Holmes novels.